Originally posted by Vik Cohen - thanks for the information on Single Payor healthcare. Your knowledge is well appreciated. Certainly. Welcome to the discussion. I just wanted to say that a free market in health care will never be socially optimal. This is a prime example of market failure resulting in suboptimal outcomes. I imagine no solution will be socially optimal, but I take it you mean that the free market is a less optimal solution. A primary reason for many of the market system failures in healthcare is the inability to accurately define and measure healthcare quality, and thus value. How can market forces work when you cannot even assign value to the service? Another reason for the failures is that a provider of services actually initiates most of the demand...70% (if I recall) of all healthcare is initiated by physicians. The perverted market forces actually result in phenomena like the inverted supply/demand curves for specialists. That said, healthcare still has great opportunities to advance through innovation, and I believe that's why free market forces still must be part of the solution. I would hate to quash the innovation in lieu of a Nationalized Care System. ... Call me naive, but if our education and healthcare were improved, especially for the under 5 crowd, I think there would be marked improvements in all sorts of social areas that would far exceed the cost. The returns to preschool education and nutrition are staggering. I really hope these kinds of programs get more widespread implementation. That's interesting. I don't recall previous discussions here of the preschool and nutrition issues. BTW, are you familiar with the CHIP program?
Hmmm, net income for their first quarter was around $43 million. Does that mean they lost money between the first and second quarters due to the war?
give me SOME credit at least, I've never used "quagmire" in a post yet hey i think our military is doing the best it could be expected to be doing there given the situation and the faliures of the leadership in planning this field trip
i'm totally kidding...i've just seen the word Halliburton used so many times as if it is the key to black ops...some secret sinister force...that i just can't resist.
